ET goes shopping in this issue as Dilia Hasanova looks at shop signs and business names in Uzbekistan. Ulker Shafiyeva and Sara Kennedy describe the impact of English in another central Asian state: Azerbaijan. Foreign language teaching and language policy were political tools in the Soviet era and developments in English teaching, and the use of English today, reflect the complex political, social and economic changes in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. English in Europe increasingly plays a national,

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... nd not just international, role, as our next three articles show. Keith Davidson updates us on the long-running story of English in Switzerland. Has Switzerland now become so globalised that English should be given some kind of semi-official status? It is the kind of proposal which meets with great resistance in Switzerland, but never quite goes away. Alison Edwards argues that Dutch English must now be regarded as a distinctive variety, joining the pantheon of World Englishes and quotes our founding editor, Tom McArthur, who announced at a conference in Amsterdam in 1993 that 'English is simply one of your languages, along with Dutch and Frisian'. Mikko Laitinen tells us that over 60% of Finns now feel that English plays an important role in their lives, and he is helping compile a 'corpus of English in Finland' which will examine the changing use of English there. But if you want to see how English fares in a truly complex linguistic and cultural context, you probably need to go to Cameroon. Kelen Ernesta Fonyuy explores the impact of globalisation on the status of English there, and the problems in developing national language policy in a country which has 279 indigenous languages, two colonial languages (English and French) and its own variety of Cameroon Pidgin English.